281. How did they transmit vote totals to Ohio SoS?

Since the uncertified patch installed by Husted was for electronic reporting vote totals to the SoS election site, that would certainly indicate some type of network / communications capability. I haven't looked at the current crop of voting and tabulating systems in Ohio, but in past cycles they had network connectivity, even blamed one "bug" on anti-virus software!

You are really naive about the technical aspects of these various systems over the years. The more you know about security threats, the less confident you are that anything electronic is secure. I have well over 40 years experience as an expert at the highest levels in computer and network security and with few exceptions (Multics, OpenVMS, and similar) nothing is secure, nothing is protected. Since we now have almost no secure chip foundries, we really can't trust the hardware either.

Most network security, encryption, and authentication is derived from Israeli and American technology, mostly that from RSA Security and its spinoff Verisign - public key encryption, SSL, HTTPS, digital signing, Certificates of Authority, site authentication, ... Most of these technologies and companies are now owned by EMC Corp, as are Network Solutions, Symantec / Norton, and lots of others. (BTW there is an interesting cozy relationship between EMC and Bain regarding these companies.)

This entire web of electronic trust and certification is itself not to be trusted. The RSA server infrastructure was hacked a couple of years ago with far reaching compromises to network security. While nothing should be trusted now, the most obvious problems have been with digitally signing malware and sites with fake CAs for Google, Microsoft, and just last month for Adobe. Throw in some DNS poisoning and everything falls apart. They also created fake CAs for Mossad, CIA, and MI6.

There are a lot of people with the ability and the tools to hack into nearly any system. That includes some with Anonymous. In the last 24 hours, Anonymous has been taking down Israeli sites in response to Israeli threats to net access in Gaza.

I don't know about voting in Ohio in 2012, though I know a lot about 2004-2010 in Ohio and particularly in NC. We got the laws changed in NC.

In 2012 I have focused on how the telephone polls might have been rigged. It turns out that many of the major polls can be rigged from a single company, a company with strong ties to Romney and Bain. I posted about this before the election, but it was unnoticed in the face of Sandy and the election itself.